Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to facilitating electronic commerce over a network and, more particularly, to authenticating payments over a network.
Related Art
In online financial transactions, users typically search for and purchase products and services through electronic communications with online merchants over electronic networks, such as the Internet. During the course of these transactions, users may provide payment in various ways including, for example, credit cards, electronic fund transfers, and other payment techniques offered by payment providers.
Typically, when online shopping at a particular website, customers select items to purchase by clicking on a link for a specific item. The selected items are placed on reserve in some type of virtual shopping cart. When done shopping, the customer proceeds to a checkout page to provide some form of payment for the selected items. At this point in the process, the customer provides some form of identification material to authenticate the customer and authorize payment. When the customer continues shopping and is ready to purchase items from another website, the customer is typically prompted again to re-enter some form of identification material, authenticate herself and subsequently authorize payment.
This process can be tedious and inconvenient. Entering information every time an online transaction takes place is inefficient and time consuming. Thus, there currently exists a need to improve the process of purchasing products and services in online transactions.